Brian Tolle: POTUS

On View April 30, 2016 - July 01, 2016

Press Release

CRG Gallery is pleased to present POTUS, Brian Tolle’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. The acronym POTUS, or President Of The United States, first appeared in early telegraph code.

As his Irish Hunger Monument (located at Battery Park City) fashions a new paradigm for public memorials, Tolle deciphers for this exhibition the multi-layered tradition of Presidential commemorative depiction.

Within each sculpture, Tolle conflates a president’s public persona, iconography and associated ephemera. The artist’s central interest is to demonstrate how these cultural relics are integrated into popular memory and, eventually, the consumer market.

Of the men who have served as President of the United States, Tolle focuses on some of the most revered and reviled. For each presidential depiction, Tolle applies components that echo vestiges of America’s craft, industry and ever-shifting global reputation, emblemized by each POTUS.

A strand of glass and lettered beads spills out of a clear acrylic facsimile of Jean- Antoine Houdon’s bust of George Washington. The letters spell out a transcript of Washington’s second inaugural address to the nation; this strand of beads terminates with a Purple Heart medal, originally created and designed by Washington to reward wounded Revolutionary War soldiers.

A rubber mask of Nixon popularized in the film Dog Day Afternoon, rests atop a Uher 5000 tape recorder, the same model made famous by his erased recorded conversations. The imported rubber mask and German technology reflect the changing global marketplace occurring during Nixon’s time in office.

Barack Obama’s “coif” is comprised of a collector’s set of miniature presidential figurines of the men that precede him, a visual metaphor of the historic burden he carries.